x86 Rpi Os

[jondallimore]

Evening,

I am attempting to convert an old smoothwall server to host Pi images for network booting.
For installing x86 Raspberry Pi OS, can I assume the best HDD format is Ext4?
So far, I have formatted to NTFS just to wipe the drives, but obviously want to use the fastest format possible.

thanks

[kerry_s]

i think you don't have a choice, installers are preconfigured.

you know network boot is an installer.
https://raspberrytips.com/network-boot- ... pberry-pi/

rpi's are arm based devices.

so i'm thinking your talking about some kinda pxe style boot ?

[jondallimore]

yeah, pi 3s using pxe, server hosting the images
I'll just bung the drives back in as ntfs then and try to install from USB.
Its been a bit of a pig so far, so I may go get a trusty hammer at some point

[kerry_s]

i read a guide over on reddit, but its rip4, but could give you ideas.
haven't tried myself as i don't currently have that kind of time to spare.
https://raspberrytips.com/network-boot- ... pberry-pi/

[thagrol]

It's been a while and I don't have my notes to hand but here's how I remember setting things up from several years ago. That setup is no longer running so I can't check (the only net booting of Pi I'm doing ATM is booting zero series, A, A+, and 3A+ over the USB ethernet gadget - that's a combination of rpiboot and NFS and requires an initrd).

• Install dnsmasq and configure it as a TFTP server. Or install another TFTP server of your choice.
• All discs partitioned and formatted as ext4
• For each client, rsync -axrvH the contents of the image (both partitions) into a directory on the server and update its cmdline.txt and fstab for root over NFS.
• Configure the necessary resources and directories for the TFPT server so that clients get the correct files. This is the bit I don't remember the details of.
• All requiired directories exported over NFS. The exports containing the client's root partition (or rather the files that would reside on the root partition) must be exported with the no_root_squash option.

I'm not sure that's the setup you're wanting though as you're talking about exporting (OS) images. Though I guess you could loop mount them and export from there.

Lastly, IIRC there is a server for netbooting Pi somewhere in the education/edu resources section of the website. Not sure if it's x86 or Pi though.